77 years ago: Don't count the Republican Party out yet

Each Monday, we turn to a day in the newspaper's history for a look at what the Editorial Board found worthy of comment. We will preserve the punctuation and capitalization of the original editorial column. Here is what we wrote on Feb. 24, 1937:

An Optimistic Republican

Republicans who have been cheerful and hopeful, and vocal, since the November election are somewhat scarce; therefore it is cheering to find United States Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan replying to the question, "How Dead is the G.O.P.?" with a decided argument that it is very much alive.

Senator Vandenberg, in an article in the Saturday Evening Post, cites many historic examples to justify his belief that the Republican party is neither dead nor dying, and that it has a useful and active future before it. He calls attention to the fact that the Democratic party, several times in its history, has been in as low a state as the Republican party is today - notably in 1904, when Judge Alton B. Parker was so overwhelmingly defeated by Theodore Roosevelt, and in 1920, when the American people, called upon to choose between Cox and Roosevelt, the Democratic nominees for president and vice president, or Harding and Coolidge, the Republican candidates, defeated the Democratic nominees by a larger proportionate majority than that given the New Deal in 1936.

So the Michigan senator, after delving into the pages of recent political history, is cheerful and hopeful. Avoiding any predictions regarding the possible outcome of the presidential election in 1940, he agrees with Franklin D. Roosevelt's statement regarding the Democratic primary after the 1928 election - that a political party polling 15,000,000 votes "doesn't need reorganizing." Senator Vandenberg feels the same way about the Republican party, which polled over sixteen and a half million votes last November.

The senator's thought is in harmony with that of many other Republicans when he sees the overwhelming New Deal majority in both houses of congress as a detriment rather than an asset to the Democracy. So larger a majority is apt to become unwieldy and unmanageable, and there are symptoms that this is exactly what is happening at Washington today.

No, the Republican party is not dead and will not die, and the very fact that it is in a helpless minority in the senate and the house of representatives in the present congress, and that the president, in control of the executive offices and the congress, and seeking to control the supreme court, enhances rather than diminishes the Republican party's prospects for the future.

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77 years ago: Don't count the Republican Party out yet

Each Monday, we turn to a day in the newspaper's history for a look at what the Editorial Board found worthy of comment. We will preserve the punctuation and capitalization of the original editorial

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